An increasing clamour to restrict and control the internet on behalf of the government, the Pentagon, the intelligence community and their private corporate arms, could result in a staged cyber attack being used as justification.

Over recent months we have seen a great increase in media coverage of inflated fears over a possible “electronic Pearl Harbor” event, with reports claiming that the U.S. could be “felled within 15 minutes”.

Vastly over-hyped (and in some cases completely asinine) claims that the power grids and other key infrastructure such as rail networks and water sources are wired up to the public internet have permeated such coverage.

Threats against computer networks in the United States are grossly exaggerated. Dire reports issued by the Defense Science Board and the Center for Strategic and International Studies “are usually richer in vivid metaphor — with fears of ‘digital Pearl Harbors’ and ‘cyber-Katrinas’ — than in factual foundation,” writes Evgeny Morozov, a respected researcher and blogger who writes on the political effects of the internet.

Morozov notes that much of the data on the supposed cyber threat “are gathered by ultra-secretive government agencies — which need to justify their own existence — and cyber-security companies — which derive commercial benefits from popular anxiety.”

When the Cybersecurity Act was introduced by Senator John Rockefeller last year, he made similar claims about the threat of cyber attacks, adding “Would it have been better if we’d have never invented the Internet?”.

Rockefeller’s legislation gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president, according to a Mother Jones report.

Provisions in the bill would allow the federal government, via the DHS and the NSA, to tap into any digital aspect of every citizen’s information without a warrant. Banking, business and medical records would be wide open to inspection, as well as personal instant message and e mail communications – all in the name of heading off cyber attacks on the nation.

Enhancements of such provisions are contained in the more recent “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act”, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman. The bill would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.

An accompanying cybersecurity control grid would only create greater risk according to experts who note that it would essentially “establish a path for the bad guys to skip down.” Other countries, such as Australia and the UK are following suit.

During the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing, Alexander said the Pentagon’s Cyber Command would enjoy “significant synergy” with the NSA. “We have to show what we’re doing to ensure that we comport, comply with the laws,” said Alexander, perversely claiming the agency is respecting and protecting the privacy of the American people.

The enemy is never specifically named, it is merely whoever uses the net, because the enemy IS the net. The enemy is the freedom the net provides to billions around the globe and the threat to militaristic dominance of information and the ultimate power that affords.

“This is going to be a goat rope on the Hill” McConnell said. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

As we have previously reported, large corporations such as Google, AT&T, Facebook and Yahoo to name but a few are intimately involved in the overarching program. Those corporations have specific government arms that are supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.

Clearly the implications of this program for the open and free internet, and for liberty in general are very worrying, this has been reflected in the resistance and criticism from groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In light of this, there is a real danger of a hyped or completely staged cyber attack being propagated in order to bring the issue to public attention and counter the critics who have exposed it as a part of the agenda to restrict the Internet.

In 2008 Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig detailed such ongoing government plans for overhaul and restriction.

Lessig told attendees of a high profile Tech conference that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig said that he came to that conclusion following a conversation with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, who informed him that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an “i-Patriot Act” if you will, and that the Justice Department is just waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

Lessig is the founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He is founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

We have also recently seen multiple mock attacks conducted by the government, via private outsourcing, on it’s own infrastructure systems. On such exercise, called “We Were Warned: Cyber Shockwave”, involved Former Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin taking the roles of government leaders. CNN broadcast the entire simulation on prime time television.

Policies to deter cyberattacks and to protect U.S. computers from infected software are the subject of ongoing discussions taking place at the Pentagon and in Congress.

“We have lots of decisions to make in the cyber domain,” said Vice Adm. Carl Mauney, deputy commander for U.S. Strategic Command. “Our work is cut out for us,” he told representatives from the information technology industry last week at a conference hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

How to keep criminals from operating in cyberspace with impunity is the intent, officials said. The federal government will practice its response to a large-scale cyberoffensive in September during Cyber Storm III, a simulated exercise that will target government computer networks and national infrastructure control systems.

Hackers today can launch sophisticated cyberattacks with little chance of getting caught and even less chance of being punished, officials complained during panel discussions at the conference.

The risk involved with executing a complex attack is “less than or equal to zero,” said Bruce Held, intelligence and counterintelligence director at the Energy Department.

“A static cyberdefense can never win against an agile cyberoffense,” Held said.

“If you on the defense beat me 99 times, I will come at you 100. If you beat me 999 times, I will come at you 1,000. But I will beat you,” he said.

The United States must impose risk and consequences in cyberspace and work to secure the information technology supply chain, said Held, who used to work as a clandestine officer in the Central Intelligence Agency.

In February, the Bipartisan Policy Center conducted CyberShockWave, a simulated act of cyberwar on the United States. The scenario consisted of a malware program being delivered to people’s phones through a popular “March Madness” basketball bracket application. The pretend attack cut service to more than 20 million smart phones and left the eastern seaboard without power. The exercise, broadcast on CNN, showed the country to be unprepared should a similar attack actually take place.

In July 2009, a serious of real-life cyberstrikes shut down government and media websites in South Korea and the United States. To date, no one knows exactly who orchestrated the barrage. And that’s one of the problems with trying to hand down punishments in cyberspace — many times, it’s virtually impossible to trace an action back to a specific computer.

Cyberattacks against networks in the United States often can be dealt with diplomatically, military leaders at last week’s conference said. They stopped short of discussing any offensive cyberoperations the recently launched Cyber Command might employ.

“We don’t need to know the specific computer [an attack] is coming from,” Held said, “but we do need to know what country it’s coming from.” The same goes for the hardware and software that the American government, companies and citizens use to conduct business and exchange sensitive information. “As a result of irreversible globalization in the economy, we are losing control of our software and hardware supply chain,” Held said.

Many products are bought not from the original manufacturers, but on the “gray” market, said Guy Copeland, who chairs the Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Working Group. Items bought on the cheap in this unauthorized manner avoid the normal testing and regulation. If the United States cannot manage a secure supply chain, it at least needs a more diverse one, Held said. Acquiring products from a variety of countries limits the possibility of becoming dependent on a nation that could become an adversary, he explained.

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“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it's an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” – Patrick Henry

This little dandy will reload any tab if activated. (right click suggestion below google search and select 'reload every' and pick an interval, then finish typing search term and click search) wacky but it works.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115/

Amit Yoran, the former cybersecurity czar at the Department of Homeland Security and a veteran security executive, joins Dennis Fisher to discuss the state of enterprise security, the Obama administration’s cybersecurity priorities and why information sharing between the government and private sector hasn’t worked.

"Homeland Defense and Security scenario vignettes cover a broad range of significant terrorist activities, to include cyber attacks directed at Canada and the U.S. as a result of CTF (Coalition Task Force) operations as well as several natural disasters."

- NORAD-USNORTHCOM__________________________________________________________From 2005 (Applies hugely moreso now because they've been planning this for years, and as you can see from above, only starting in 2008 did NORTHCOM/Booz Allen Hamilton ramp up their attack plans on this.)

SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal government and several international partners will hold a cyber preparedness exercise in November, Homeland Security Department officials said here at the RSA Conference. Its purpose is to give federal agencies an opportunity to test their plans for responding to a direct or indirect attack on the computer networks that control the nation's critical infrastructure such as power plants and oil pipelines. The exercise will be unclassified, and the public will be informed, said Hun Kim, deputy director of the National Cyber Security Division at DHS.

Instead, Wilson said he suspects that sophisticated intruders wouldquietly try to wreak havoc, causing a loss of confidence in theinterconnected system of networks and information systems on which the nation's economy and security now depends. "Somebody's going to figure out how to get across a low wall and get on the inside, and they're not going to go in a chat room and talk about it," Wilson said. "We're talking about a sophisticated adversary."

Finding a hidden enemy and cleaning up the damage in such a scenario would be extremely difficult, Wilson said. "You're going to have not only national security issues; you're going to have privacy issues.

I'll leave it at that," he said.__________________________________________________________SourceEurope to get cybercrime alert system

Europe is getting a cybercrime alert system as part of a European Union drive to fight online criminals. According to plans, European law enforcement body Europol will receive 300,000 euros ($386,430) to build an alert system that pools reports of cybercrime, such as online identification and financial theft, from across the 27 member states.

Police will launch more remote searches of suspects' hard drives over the Internet, as well as cyberpatrols to spot and track illegal activity, under the strategy adopted by the European Union's council of ministers Thursday. The strategy, a blueprint for fighting cybercrime in the EU over the next five years, also introduces measures to encourage businesses and police to share information on investigations and cybercrime trends.

"The strategy encourages the much-needed operational cooperation and information exchange between the member states," said Jacques Barrot, vice president of the European Commission. "If the strategy is to make the fight against cybercrime more efficient, all stakeholders have to be fully committed to its implementation. We are ready to support them, also financially, in their efforts." Plans for the EU alert system follow the recent establishments of the Police Central E-crime Unit and National Fraud Strategic Authority, which aim to fight cybercrime in the United Kingdom.__________________________________________________________How might Obama's appointment to head the DHS turn things around for the department? Experts weigh in.

Though it is charged with keeping America safe, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also run up a record of high-profile failures during its short history. Its role in the response to Hurricane Katrina, followed by a series of cyber security breaches, led to Congressional criticism of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and its CIO, Scott Charbo. And several of its proposed programs have stalled.

It's a legacy that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is poised to inherit, having been named on Monday as President-elect Barack Obama's pick for DHS secretary. And as a result of the DHS's troubles, information security experts have a laundry list of suggestions for Napolitano once she's confirmed.

First off, she should speed up the hiring process to better protect against future cyber security threats, according to Shannon Kellogg, director of information security policy at EMC (NYSE: EMC). Kellogg pointed out that the DHS has lost several employees involved in information security, including Greg Garcia, assistant secretary for cyber security and communications, who announced his departure this week.

Getting new people in quickly and retaining them will be important because US-CERT, the operational arm of the department's National Cyber Security Division and a key player in national and private sector Internet security, is building out broader capabilities and expanding quickly, Kellogg told InternetNews.com.

"That requires you hire people very quickly, but this is counter to how government hiring processes work," he added. US-CERT coordinates defenses against and responses to cyber attacks nationwide and issues security threat warnings. It developed software for the Einstein Program, an intrusion detection system in the federal government that is the result of the 2002 Homeland Security Act, the 2003 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive/Hspd-12, issued in August 2004. The first two versions of Einstein have been implemented in the Federal government.

EMC's Kellogg said that Einstein III is in the works. The project -- in which Kellogg called on Napolitano to continue investing -- will add real-time reporting capabilities to the system.

Clean up your own house

Napolitano should also make sure DHS deals with its own security vulnerabilities. The department suffered 844 security breaches during its fiscal 2005 and 2006, leading a House subcommittee on tech and cyber security to DHS CIO Scott Charbo of not doing his job, during a June 2007 hearing. The breaches also led to charges from a congressman that the IT vendor DHS contracted to build its networks, Unisys, bore partial responsibility for the breaches. The company quickly denied the accusations' validity, but the incident later led to an FBI probe of Unisys (NYSE: UIS).

"I hope the new secretary will continue to emphasize the importance of information security in this environment," EMC's Kellogg said. "DHS should be an example for information security within the federal government." As a result, the DHS should take a proactive approach to security, Scott Crawford, research director at Enterprise Management Associates, told InternetNews.com.

"There is no national agenda for taking cyber security all that seriously at this point," he said. "The DHS is left to reacting to events as they occur and leaving events to the private sector." Also at issue is how the next director of homeland security will work with the tech czar that Obama has promised to appoint -- a position commonly thought of as a national CTO. While details are scant on Obama's plans for the position, analyst Charles King of Pund-IT said he believes Napolitano should fight the idea of creating a single CTO position.

Instead, he thinks she should suggest a national council of CTOs, he told InternetNews.com in an e-mail. A long list of rumored candidates Obama's tech czar post has included names like that of Google CEO Eric Schmidt -- who later signaled his interest in remaining at the search giant -- as well as former FCC chair Reed Hundt, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Julius Genachowski, an economic adviser to Obama and cofounder of venture capital firm Rock Creek Ventures.

But King thinks that's a bad idea. Napolitano should appoint working CTOs who have actually been involved in developing successful commercial projects, he said. He added that Napolitano ought to keep the national CTO on a tight leash, giving them three months to develop one-, two- and three-year plans for modernizing the nation's IT resources -- and refusing to extend the deadline.

All these suggestions will take time to flesh out. But one of the things Napolitano can do to score points quickly with the new administration is to have DHS establish a methodology to rate how well companies and agencies are communicating securely, one observer noted. "The DHS should enable agencies and the U.S. government to use a unified architecture to communicate securely, and a rating system will motivate people to use best practices for secure communication," said Kelly Mackin, president and COO of DataMotion, told InternetNews.com.

According to Mackin, whose firm handles secure e-mail for a U.K. government department, there are 4.7 terabytes of e-mail data for every 1,000 employees in a company -- data that could pose a danger if not properly locked down. "Although 93 percent of employees think e-mail is a critical piece of how they do business, most of that e-mail is not secured, and DHS must address this problem," she said.__________________________________________________________Voter Fraud Recount Revealed: AIPAC/Rockefeller!!!!!!!!!!!!http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=21681.msg83959#msg83959

"FBI INFRAGARD - Kill your neighbors with FBI/CACI intelligence!Infragard--Join now and get your own license to kill!!!"

The most critical computer and communication networks used by the U.S. government and military are secured by encryption software written by an Israeli "code breaker" tied to an Israeli state-run scientific institution.

The National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. intelligence agency with the mandate to protect government and military computer networks and provide secure communications for all branches of the U.S. government uses security software written by an Israeli code breaker whose home office is located at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.

A Bedford, Massachusetts-based company called RSA Security, Inc. issued a press release on March 28, 2006, which revealed that the NSA would be using its security software:

"U.S. Department of Defense Agency Selects RSA Security Encryption Software" was the headline of the company's press release which announced that the National Security Agency had selected its encryption software to be used in the agency's "classified communications project.

RSA stands for the names of the founders of the company: Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard M. Adleman. Adi Shamir, the lead theoretician, is an Israeli citizen and a professor at the Weizmann Institute, a scientific institution tied to the Israeli defense establishment.

"My main area of research is cryptography – making and breaking codes," Shamir's webpage at the Weizmann Institute says. "It is motivated by the explosive growth of computer networks and wireless communication. Without cryptographic protection, confidential information can be exposed to eavesdroppers, modified by hackers, or forged by criminals."

The NSA/Central Security Service defines itself as America’s cryptologic organization, which "coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. government information systems and produce foreign signals intelligence information."

The fact that the federal intelligence agency responsible for protecting the most critical computer systems and communications networks used by all branches of the U.S. government and military is using Israeli-made encryption software should come as no surprise. The RSA press release is just the icing on the cake; the keys to the most critical computer networks in the United States have long been held in Israeli hands.

AFP inquired with the NSA about its use of Israeli-made security software for classified communications projects and asked why such outsourcing was not seen as a national security threat. Why is "America’s cryptologic organization" using Israeli encryption codes?

NSA spokesman Ken White said that the agency is "researching" the matter and would respond in the coming week.

American Free Press has previously revealed that scores of "security software" companies – spawned and funded by the Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence agency – have proliferated in the United States.

The "security" software products of many of these usually short-lived Israeli-run companies have been integrated into the computer products which are provided to the U.S. government by leading suppliers such as Unisys.

Unisys integrated Israeli security software, provided by the Israel-based Check Point Software Technologies and Eurekify, into its own software, so that Israeli software, written by Mossad-linked companies, now "secures" the most sensitive computers in the U.S. government and commercial sector.

The Mossad-spawned computer security firms typically have a main office based in the U.S. while their research and development is done in Israel.

The Mossad start-up firms usually have short lives before they are acquired for exaggerated sums of money by a larger company, enriching their Israeli owners in the process and integrating the Israeli directors and their Mossad-produced software into the parent company.

RSA, for example, an older security software company, acquired an Israeli-run security software company, named Cyota, at the end of 2005 for $145 million.

In January 2005, Cyota, "the leading provider of online security and anti-fraud solutions for financial institutions" had announced that "security expert" Amit Yoran, had joined the company's board of directors.

Prior to becoming a director at Cyota, Yoran, a 34-year old Israeli, had already been the national "Cyber Czar," having served as director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division.

Yoran had been appointed "Cyber Czar" at age 32 by President George W. Bush in September 2003.

Before joining DHS, Yoran had been vice president for worldwide managed security services at Symantec. Prior to that, he had been the founder, president and CEO of Riptech, Inc., an information security management and monitoring firm, which Symantec acquired in 2002 for $145 million.

Yoran and his brother Naftali Elad Yoran are graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at Westpoint. Elad graduated in 1991 and Amit in 1993. Along with their brother Dov, the Yoran brothers are key players in the security software market. Amit has also held critical positions in the U.S. government overseeing computer security for the very systems that apparently failed on 9/11.

Before founding Riptech in 1998, Yoran directed the vulnerability- assessment program within the computer emergency response team at the US Department of Defense.

Yoran previously served as an officer in the United States Air Force as the Director of Vulnerability Programs for the Department of Defense's Computer Emergency Response Team and in support of the Assistant Secretary of Defense's Office.

In June 2005, Yoran joined the board of directors of Guardium, Inc., another Mossad-spawned "provider of database security solutions" based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Guardium is linked with Ptech, an apparent Mossad "cut out" computer security company linked with the 9/11 attacks. Ptech, a computer software company in Quincy, Mass., was supposedly a small start-up company founded by a Lebanese Muslim and funded by a Saudi millionaire.

Yet Ptech's clients included all the key federal governmental agencies, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Naval Air Command, Congress, the Department of Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, NATO, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and even the White House.

The marketing manager at Ptech, Inc. when the company started in the mid-1990s, however, was not a Muslim or an Arab, but an American Jewish lawyer named Michael S. Goff who had suddenly quit his law firm for no apparent reason and joined the Arab-run start-up company.

Goff was the company's information systems manager and had single-handedly managed the company's marketing and "all procurement" of software, systems and peripherals. He also trained the employees. Goff was obviously the key person at Ptech.

In the wake of 9/11, during the Citizens' Commission hearings in New York, Indira Singh, a consultant who had worked on a Defense Advanced Research Project, pointed to Ptech and MITRE Corp. being involved in computer "interoperability issues" between the FAA and NORAD. At this time Ptech's ties to Arabs was the focus, and Goff was out of the picture.

"Ptech was with MITRE Corporation in the basement of the FAA for two years prior to 9/11," Singh said. "Their specific job is to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force in the case of an emergency. If anyone was in a position to know that the FAA – that there was a window of opportunity or to insert software or to change anything – it would have been Ptech along with MITRE."

The Mossad-run Guardium company is linked with Ptech through Goff Communications, the Holliston, Mass.-based public relations firm previously run by Michael S. Goff and his wife Marcia, which represents Guardium. Since being exposed in AFP in 2005, however, Michael's name no longer appears on the company website.

Although he and his brother reportedly grew up in Pound Ridge, New York during the 1970s and 1980s, the heads of the Jewish community told AFP that they had never heard of him. One said that she had conducted a survey of the Jews living in the small village of Pound Ridge in the 1970s and she would have remembered if a wealthy Israeli family named Yoran had been found. Why did the locals in Pound Ridge NOT remember the Yorans?

Probably because they were NOT in Pound Ridge - but in Israel. The Pound Ridge address was used to give the appearance that the Yorans were Americans. I spoke with Elad and he has a distinctive Israeli accent - not what you would expect for a guy who grew up in a posh Yankee village.

So who are the Yorans? Who are their parents and why did they come to the United States? To raise a couple high-level moles to infiltrate the most sensitive U.S. computer networks? How could they have lived for 20 years in Pound Ridge and NOT be remembered.

GET READY FOR THE NEW AMERIKA!! A BETTER INFORMED SOCIETY WILL RESULT IN A FREER ONE WITH OUR MACHINE GUNS AND CYBER POLICE THAT CAN'T GET ANY OTHER TYPE OF JOBS BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY JOBS WE'VE LEFT FOR YOU IN THE NAU!!! YOU PASS OUT ANTI-NWO MATERIAL, & PROTEST CLOUD COMPUTING? YOU'LL BE SHOT ON SIGHT!!! YOU WON'T EVEN HAVE TO GET ON THE TRAIN, BECAUSE THE SECRET THAT NO ONE HAS TOLD YOU IS THAT THE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, BUSES, ET.AL. WILL TAKE YOU TO THE FEMA CAMPS UNDER USTRANSCOM! NOW SHUT UP SLAVES!!!!

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“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it's an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” – Patrick Henry

Vancouver/Ontario, Las Vegas, Atlanta. All down for the past week(probably longer), if any techies are out there, how long does YOUR server go down before YOU get a call, and you kickstart that puppy? Those are being sabotaged on purpose I think, until someone can prove otherwise.

Personally I download entire websites and forums to a offline browser(MetaProducts Offline Explorer Enterprise 5.3) Should this community ever need to restore these forums or infowars site in the future? I suggest others do the same. Note the forums alone have 60k files, it will take sometime and a large hard drive. But isnt INFOwar about having and sharing information? So lets keep our options open and prepare for the worst.

Personally I download entire websites and forums to a offline browser(MetaProducts Offline Explorer Enterprise 5.3) Should this community ever need to restore these forums or infowars site in the future? I suggest others do the same. Note the forums alone have 60k files, it will take sometime and a large hard drive. But isnt INFOwar about having and sharing information? So lets keep our options open and prepare for the worst.

MORE INFORMATION PLEASE.

In this thread or the tech thread or anywhere.

thanks

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately